State, Power and Global Order

This article examines the evolution of international thought through the notion of ‘political space’. It focuses on two important domains of international politics, the nation-state and the global, to reflect on the discipline’s spatial categories. Since its inception, the concept of the nationstate has dominated mainstream International Relations (IR) theory. Yet an investigation of how international order has been theorised over IR’s first century shows that this era has also been defined by globalist visions of political order. This study reviews the interplay of the state and the global sphere, using Barbara Ward’s analysis of equality and development to shed light on the interplay of the global and the national spaces. Nowadays, globalization is sometimes seen as the apex of the historical interplay of particularity and universality. The progression towards global political and economic order, however, is today undermined by the resurgence of statecentric political nationalism which seeks to challenge the legitimacy of the global political space

We are friends but are we family? Organizational identification and nonfamily employee turnover

Retaining talented employees continues to be a challenge for organizations. This challenge is especially difficult for family businesses because the family-centric priorities of these firms often disadvantage nonfamily employees and make retaining them problematic. Our study posits organizational identification, or internalizing the firm’s identity as one’s own, as a key factor in overcoming this challenge. Fostering organizational identification in family businesses is complicated by the presence of both family and nonfamily employees, and research is needed to understand the ways in which these complex social dynamics operate. To gain this understanding, we adopt a social network perspective to examine the differential impact of friendships with family and nonfamily members on nonfamily employees’ organizational identification and turnover. Results from a study of the nonfamily employees of a family-owned service company show that centrality in both family and nonfamily friendship networks reduces turnover, but that friendships with family members have a stronger effect. Results also show that various forms of embeddedness in social networks have indirect effects on turnover through organizational identification, highlighting identification’s importance for retaining nonfamily employees. Implications for turnover theory and nonfamily employees are also discussed

The Dissimilar Effects of Fairness on Knowledge Sharing in Distributed Workgroups: A Social Network Perspective

Distributed workgroups are increasingly adopted by global organizations, enabled by technology advances. While social ties and performance of such workgroups have been examined in existing literature, the distinctions in knowledge sharing practices remain blurred. We developed a research model to examine the effects of social ties on knowledge sharing practices through the lens of justice perceptions (i.e., fairness) from a dyadic level. The model was tested in a field study of distributed workgroups at a large multinational organization. Our results suggested that Simmelian-tied dyads (dyads embedded in three-person cliques) had significant influence on justice perceptions and knowledge sharing. Expertise knowledge sharing was influenced by procedural and informational justice perceptions. Contrary to previous studies, our study suggested that product knowledge sharing occurred regardless of distributive justice perception. The findings provided insights to the mechanisms underlying social ties, justice perceptions, and knowledge sharing

How To Reorganize Social Network For Better Knowledge Contribution During Mobile Collaboration? A Study Based On Anti-Social Behavioral Perspective

Mobile collaboration is an emerging kind of collaboration that adopts mobile devices (i.e., laptops, PDAs, and smart phones) and social media software to improve the efficiency and productivity of collaboration. However, many collaborative teams suffer from an anti-social behavior called social loafing. Social loafing will hinder knowledge exchange within the team and further influence team performance and project outcomes. Moreover, the state of an individual’s social loafing is unobservable and changes overtime, making it difficult to be identified in real time. Therefore, our research aims to investigate the evolution of social loafing and its impact on knowledge contribution in the mobile collaboration context. We propose a machine learning model to infer individuals’ unobserved and evolving social loafing state from the series of task behaviors (quantity and quality of the contributed knowledge). Also, we explore how one’s centrality in a social network affects his/her knowledge contribution behavior when he/she is in different social loafing states. We conduct an empirical study and the results show that individuals with high or low social loafing state are very ‘sticky’ to maintain the previous state and the centrality in the network only positively influences individuals in medium social loafing state. In conclusion, our research adopts a machine leaning method to infer the evolution of individuals’ social loafing and provides a comprehensive understanding of knowledge contribution in team work

Web-enabled boundary spanners and their role in the knowledge flow network

We argue that types of Simmelian-tied employee dyads (dyads embedded in three-person cliques) influences organizational justice perceptions, and knowledge sharing within and across organizational boundaries through virtual workgroups. We study the interaction between employees\u27 advice and friendship ties, shared interpersonal, interactional, procedural and distributive justice perceptions, and the types of knowledge shared from a social network perspective. We predict that Simmelian-tied advice and friendship dyads influence justice perceptions, and in turn knowledge sharing. Compared to Simmelian-tied advice dyads, we suggest that Simmelian-tied friendship dyads were hypothesized to be strongly associated with congruent distributive, interpersonal, and interpersonal justice perceptions. Congruent procedural justice perceptions were likely to be associated with both Simmelian-tied advice and friendship ties. We hypothesized that distributive, procedural, and informational justice perceptions were likely to be shared across formal organizational boundaries through strong friendship ties. We also predicted that positive congruent procedural, interpersonal and informational justice perceptions influenced expert knowledge sharing while congruent distributive justice perceptions influenced product knowledge sharing

Education policy: process, themes and impact

Education policy is high on the agenda of governments across the world as global pressures focus increasing attention on the outcomes of education policy and on the implications for economic prosperity and social citizenship. However, there is often an underdeveloped understanding of how education policy is formed, what drives it and how it impacts on schools and colleges. Education Policy: Process, Themes and Impact makes these connections and links them to the wider challenges of educational leadership in a contemporary context

Beyond consumerism: new historical perspectives on consumption

If there is one agreement between theorists of modernity and those of post-modernity, it is about the centrality of consumption to modern capitalism and contemporary culture. To thinkers as different as Werner Sombart, Emile Durkheim and Thorstein Veblen at the turn of the twentieth century, consumption was a decisive force behind modern capitalism, its dynamism and social structure. More recently, Anthony Giddens has presented consumerism as simultaneous cause and therapeutic response to the crisis of identities emanating from the pluralization of communities, values and knowledge in ‘post-traditional society’. Post-modernists like Baudrillard have approached consumption as the semiotic code constituting post-modernity itself: ultimately, signs are consumed, not objects. Such has been the recent revival of theoretical interest in consumption that the historian might feel acutely embarrassed by the abundance of choice and the semiotic and, indeed, political implications of any particular approach. Which theory is most appropriate for the historical study of ‘consumer society’? What is being consumed, by whom, why, and with what consequence differs fundamentally in these writings: should we study objects, signs or experiences, focus on the drive to emulate others or to differentiate oneself, analyse acquisitive mentalities or ironic performances, condemn resulting conformity or celebrate subversion? The aim of this article is to outline some of the questions that may help structure such a debate. Should we think in terms of a linear expansion of western consumerism ending in global convergence? What was the underlying dynamic of this expansion and where should we locate its modernity? What was the place of consumption in social and political relations, and what do these connections (and disconnections) tell us about the nature of ‘consumer society’? More broadly, what are the meanings of consumption and what should historians include or exclude? ‘Consumerism’ and ‘modern consumer society’, it will be argued, are concepts with diminishing analytical and conceptual usefulness that have privileged a particular western version of modern consumption at the expense of the multi-faceted and often contradictory workings of consumption in the past and are increasingly at odds with the current debate about the cultures and politics of consumption

“Envisioning Digital Sanctuaries”: An Exploration of Virtual Collectives for Nurturing Professional Development of Women in Technical Domains

Work and learning are essential facets of our existence, yet sociocultural barriers have historically limited access and opportunity for women in multiple contexts, including their professional pursuits. Such sociocultural barriers are particularly pronounced in technical domains and have relegated minoritized voices to the margins. As a result of these barriers, those affected have suffered strife, turmoil, and subjugation. Hence, it is important to investigate how women can subvert such structural limitations and find channels through which they can seek support and guidance to navigate their careers. With the proliferation of modern communication infrastructure, virtual forums of conversation such as Reddit have emerged as key spaces that allow knowledge-sharing, provide opportunities for mobilizing collective action, and constitute sanctuaries of support and companionship. Yet, recent scholarship points to the negative ramifications of such channels in perpetuating social prejudice, directed particularly at members from historically underrepresented communities. Using a novel comparative muti-method, multi-level empirical approach comprising content analysis, social network analysis, and psycholinguistic analysis, I explore the way in which virtual forums engender community and foster avenues for everyday resilience and collective care through the analysis of 400,267 conversational traces collected from three subreddits (r/cscareerquestions, r/girlsgonewired & r/careerwoman). Blending the empirical analysis with a novel theoretical apparatus that integrates insights from social constructivist frameworks, feminist data studies, computer-supported collaborative work, and computer-mediated communication, I highlight how gender, care, and community building intertwine and collectively impact the emergent conversational habits of these online enclaves. Key results indicate six content themes ranging from discussions on knowledge advancement to scintillating ethical probes regarding disparities manifesting in the technical workplace. Further, psycholinguistic and network insights reveal four pivotal roles that support and enrich the communities in different ways. Taken together, these insights help to postulate an emergent spectrum of relationality ranging from a more agentic to a more communal pattern of affinity building. Network insights also yield valuable inferences regarding the role of automated agents in community dynamics across the forums. A discussion is presented regarding the emergent routines of care, collective empowerment, empathy-building tactics, community sustenance initiatives, and ethical perspectives in relation to the involvement of automated agents. This dissertation contributes to the theory and practice of how virtual collectives can be designed and sustained to offer spaces for enrichment, empowerment, and advocacy, focusing on the professional development of historically underrepresented voices such as women

The outcomes of perceived work-based support for mothers: A conceptual model

With the increase in the proportion of women holding leadership positions work-based support has been identified as an important issue in female workers’ job performance and their decisions to have children and to return to work after giving birth. Nonetheless, we need to better understand how mothers develop these perceptions about support at the workplace and how these perceptions in turn affect their decisions and behavior. Job performance (both task and contextual), work attitudes, and retention of female workers with children are influenced by the psychological contract expectations reflected in the perceived level of support provided by organizational, supervisor, and peer sources. Based on an integrative literature review, we propose a comprehensive model linking perceived multi-dimensional work-based support for motherhood with different work-related outcomes in order to more fully explain the decisions and behaviors of working mothers and how organizations might better accommodate the specific needs of this important contingent of the workforce